Kevin Feige on Doctor Strange’s powers, which include “screwing with time”

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

With DOCTOR STRANGE on the horizon, we'll soon be witnessing a whole new magical side of the Marvel universe. The upcoming film will follow the story of neurosurgeon Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) who, after a horrific car accident, discovers the hidden world of magic and alternate dimensions. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige spoke with Entertainment Weekly and laid out a few of the magical abilities that Dr. Strange will wield in the film.

He can do a whole host of things, eventually, he does cast spells, which in the comics have very sort of tongue-twisty fun names. We don’t want to shy away from that, because that’s what makes Doctor Strange Doctor Strange. He has a Cloak of Levitation that allows him to fly, but he doesn’t fly like Superman or like Thor. It’s almost got a consciousness of its own, this cloak, which, again, gives us a superhero with a red cape — which we’ve seen a few times — but allows us to do it in a wholly unique and wholly original way. He can create these mandalas of light that he can use as shields and he can use as sort of weapons. He can create portals that will open before your eyes that he can step through and go to other places around the world. And frankly, even in this film, we’ll only touch upon what a lot of his powers are.

With so many abilities under his cloak it's only natural that DOCTOR STRANGE will introduce a few new ones to the Marvel universe, such as time-travel, which Kevin Feige says will play a part in the story rather than just function as a flashy visual effect.

The Cloak of Levitation [and] the Eye of Agamotto are his two signature pieces. In this film, the Eye is a very important relic that can be quite dangerous if used in the wrong hands, because it has the ability to do any number of things, the most dangerous of which is, it can sort of manipulate probabilities. Which is also another way of saying, ‘screw around with time’ — which is part of our story.

DOCTOR STRANGE is set for a November 4, 2016 release.